It wasn’t too many years ago when that’s
all that people in the commercial fishing industry heard. The government
was going to help them buy new boats. The government was going to help
them catch more fish. The government was going to help them handle those
fish better and sell them to more people for more money. The government
even provided a multimillion dollar fund to pay for it all. From the National
Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) budget request for the year 2000
“The American Fisheries Promotion Act (AFPA) of 1980 authorized a grants
program for fisheries research and development projects and a National
Fisheries Research and Development Program to be carried out with Saltonstall-Kennedy
(S-K) funds. S-K funds are derived from duties on imported fisheries products.”[]

The United States imported more than $8 billion in seafood last year.
So there should still be a big pot of money available to the National Fisheries
Research and Development Program, and there are definitely research and
development projects that could be done to help the industry. Somewhat
puzzlingly - particularly when considering the NMFS description of the
intent of Congress above - only 1.5 million S-K dollars (minus NMFS administrative
costs, of course) will be available in industry grants for this coming
year, and these grants are only to (again in the agency’s words - these
from the Federal Register notice announcing the grant program): “1.
eliminate and prevent overfishing and overcapitalization, 2. attain economic
sustainability in fishing communities, and 3. develop environmentally and
economically sound marine aquaculture.” Further
in the Federal Register announcement NMFS elaborates on how these funds
will be used to “attain economic sustainability.”
Projects
considered for funding will address “retraining
of fishermen for alternative employment, alternative uses for existing
fishing industry infrastructure, and planning for fishing capacity reduction.”

So, to “promote” commercial fishing, NMFS has decided to spend a miniscule
part of the available S-K funds on projects further cutting back
on harvesting and getting even more people, buildings and boats out of
fishing. Some promotion.

Or how about “we’re from the government and we’re
here to help ourselves?”

What about the rest of the S-K revenues raised? Going back
to the NMFS budget request, we see that “An amount
equal to 30 percent of these duties is being transferred to the Department
of Commerce from the Department of Agriculture (we don’t know what
the USDA does with the remainder, about $150 million, but it surely isn’t
going to helping fishermen). The FY 2000 Budget estimates
this transfer at $66.4 million. Of this $66.4 million, $1.5 million will
be used for the S-K grants program to develop a healthy fishery based industry
(including costs of program administration). The remainder of the transfer
($64.9 million) will be used to offset the Operations, Research, and Facilities
(ORF) account (of NMFS).” So we not only have the agency that is
in charge of managing our nation’s fisheries “profiting” from its inability
to manage those fisheries, we also have it using money intended by Congress
to promote the industry being used instead to downsize the industry even
more. And, of course, encouraging even more imports. Nice work if you can
get it.

Isn’t drastic downsizing of the fishing industry
really necessary?

Most of us have read the various predictions
of imminent or existing crises in fisheries around the world, including
those in the United States’ being managed by NMFS and the regional councils.
In view of these supposed widespread crises and in view of our evidently
uncontrollable - at least in the estimation of the agency in charge - urge
to keep on fishing, shouldn’t we be cutting back across the board on our
ability to harvest? If one buys into the crisis pandering arguments of
NMFS and the various anti-fishing groups, one would certainly think so.
But let’s take a look at the stated goals of the NMFS’s National Recreational
Fishery Resources Conservation Plan that is on that agency’s website [].
Among them are:“Provide
for increased recreational fishing opportunities nationwide through
the conservation, restoration, and enhancement of aquatic systems and fish
populations, and by increasing fishing access....Support and encourage
programs
and projects designed to enhance marine recreational fishing opportunities....encourage
environmentally responsible acquisition and/or expansion of public access
opportunities for anglers and boaters.”(emphasis
added)

The NMFS leadership is committed to reducing
the size of the commercial fishing industry - which at the same time will,
happily for them, increase seafood imports and the amount of Saltonstall-Kennedy
funds available to swell their budget - supposedly because of the sorry
condition of the fisheries they manage. But at the same time they are committed
to increasing and enhancing recreational fishing opportunities. And - again
coincidentally? - by swelling recreational fishing and boating expenditures
they will be increasing the Wallop-Breaux funds available to enhance recreational
fishing and boating opportunities and access even more (see FishNet USA
#4 for info on Wallop-Breaux).

So what about recreational angling?

But perhaps recreational fishermen and women don’t kill enough
fish to make a difference. Or perhaps the commercial fishermen aren’t responding
to the best efforts of the managers the way they should. Perhaps they really
need to have their infrastructure yanked out from under them to get them
to toe the management line. To see what’s going on we retrieved from the
NMFS website the annual recreational catch []and
commercial landings data []
for the major inshore fish species (fluke, winter flounder, bluefish, scup,
sea bass, striped bass - note that there is no commercial fishery for striped
bass in New Jersey - and weakfish) for New Jersey for the years 1992 to
1996. They are graphed below. Assuming that the average weight of each
of these fish caught by New Jersey anglers is a pound or two, and assuming
that half the fish caught by recreational anglers are released and don’t
subsequently die, for these most popular species the mortality due to recreational
fishing in New Jersey is far higher than the commercial landings. And,
most significantly, it’s been growing for the past five years while commercial
landings have been dropping precipitously. From what we know of other states
in the Mid-Atlantic and on south, we doubt it’s very different elsewhere.
So why the total focus by NMFS on reducing commercial fishing effort?

Where is the increase in fishing mortality
by recreational anglers coming from?

We’ve previously mentioned the seeming “immortality” of fiberglass,
the nearly indestructible construction material of choice for virtually
all recreational vessels built today. Going to the recreational boating/personal
watercraft industry’s major trade group, the National Marine Manufacturers
Association, we find that from 1997 to 1998 almost 600,000 boats were added
to the U.S. recreational boating fleet. [].
This is an annual growth rate of about 3%, which corresponds - coincidentally
yet again? - to the average increase in the NJ inshore recreational angling
catch for the last 4 years. Anyone familiar with the congestion of recreational
tuna boats in the Mid-Atlantic’s offshore canyons knows the same growth
is taking place there as well. And, without limits on the number of recreational
boats or recreational fishing effort, there’s certainly no limit on what
all these anglers collectively catch

A mid-level boat manufactured by Viking Yachts, a New
Jersey company known for its offshore sportsfishing yachts.The tournaments
referred to are for marlin and/or tuna.Check out the website for the Big
Rock tournament to find out what these exclusive events are all about and
where these fish are going.

The bottom line

It doesn’t take much insight to see that an increased number
of boats, recreational or commercial, means an increased amount of fishing
and a corresponding increase in the attendant levels of fishing mortality.
So why is NMFS, the federal agency that is responsible for managing our
nations fisheries and setting national fisheries policy, doing everything
it can with one hand to reduce the size and the efficiency of the commercial
fishing fleet while with the other it has embarked on an ambitious program
to enhance and increase recreational fishing opportunities and access?
Why has that agency been put in the position of increasing the size of
its budget with every boat it removes from the commercial fishing fleet,
every fish that it takes from the net of a commercial fisherman, and every
dollar it adds to our trade deficit, and why has the fisheries management
establishment been put in the position of increasing its budget with every
fish landed by a recreational fisherman or woman and every boat bought
by a recreational boater? How important are these apparent conflicts in
molding the policies of NMFS, the regional Councils and the state fisheries
agencies that depend on Saltonstall-Kennedy and Wallop-Breaux funding for
large parts of their budgets? And most importantly, how believable can
the dire warnings of commercial overfishing be when the agency that generates
all the data they are based on applies them only to harvesting fish commercially
and disregards them completely when it comes to its official policy of
“increasing and enhancing” recreational fishing?

Each year the National Marine Fisheries Service becomes more strident
in its attempts to reduce the size of the commercial fishing industry and
devotes more of its energies and resources to accomplishing that task.
Each year the members of the commercial fishing industry have less faith
in the agency and in a management system that, while attempting to drive
them out of business, appears to be seriously conflicted and blatantly
committed to allocation decisions based on inadequate science and what
appears to be an inconsistent and unfair philosophy. Can the industry be
blamed? And is the federal impetus to downsize the commercial fishing industry,
which is now parroted by anti-commercial fishing groups hiding behind the
“conservation” banner, really driven by biological necessity which for
some reason doesn’t apply to recreational angling, or is it a predictable
response to the self-serving interests of an agency with values severely
distorted by these apparent conflicts?

- The
Oil Slick-

From a National Fish and wildlife Foundation release:
“July
1, 1999 is the pre-proposal deadline for submitting matching grant proposals
for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Shell Oil Company Foundation
program to fund projects that protect, conserve, or enhance the Gulf of
Mexico ecosystem.” Then from CNN: “On
July 6, 1999, about 4,500 fishermen and 500 shrimp vessels were reported
to have established a blockade around a state-owned petroleum refinery
at Ciudad del Carmen in the southern Gulf of Mexico, accusing the facility
of damaging fisheries by pollution.” (From the CRS weekly
fisheries update). Perhaps the fishermen should have applied for a Shell
grant instead?

FishNet USA is distributed
to over 1500 elected and appointed officials, media representatives, individuals
and organizations with an interest in fisheries issues via fax and email.
It is supported by Atlantic Capes Fisheries, the Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative,
Lund’s Fisheries, Export, Inc., Agger Fish Corp., and Viking Village Dock